The pattern of the Italian Congregation's initial expansion was very
similar to that of the Spanish Congregation. By 1617 it had spread so
widely that six provinces were created: three in Italy, one in Poland,
one in France, and a sixth which embraced Belgium and Germany. Others
were being added all the time: Sicily and Paris in 1626, Ireland in 1638(1),
Aquitaine in 1641, Piedmont and Burgundy in 1643. Fifty years after its
inception there were 14 provinces, with 149 friaries and a total
professed membership of 2.326 religious. As well as that it had about
one hundred missionaries scattered throughout Persia, India, Arabia,
Syria, The Lebanon, England(2), and
Holland. Three special seminaries -in Rome, Louvain and Malta- were
established for the training of missionaries, and, thanks to the
alertness of Fr.Prospero of the Holy Spirit, the Discalced were also
able to renew the Carmelite presence on Mount Carmel in 1631.

During the second half of the 17th century, growth continued at
almost the same pace as before: six new provinces in Belgium, France and
Italy; missions to Malabar and Mogul in India, and to Patrax in Greece.
By 1701 membership had reached 3.855 in 181 friaries.

Entering the second sentury of their existence, the rate of growth
slowed down, and levelled off about mid-way through it at 4.270
religious, distributed among 23 provinces, (those of Austria (1701),
Lithuania (1743), Lorraine (1740), Bavaria (1740), and Flanders (1761),
having been aded in the meantine). There were also some 200 missionaries
in Persia, Mesopotamia, India, Syria, The Lebanon, China, Lousiana,
England, Holland, and Ireland(3).

The last monastery to be founded was that of Imola (1735), and then
came the persecutions and suppressions of the late 18th and early 19 th
centuries. Sorely though these tried the Congregation its international
character enabled it to survive in one place while persecuted in another.
Perhaps it also had more vitality than its counterpart in Spain, having
been less troubled by the problems and tensions that sapped the vitality
of the latter.

The first signs of trouble to come were the dispositions of the
"Commission des Réguliers" in 1766. These affected the 750
religious who made up the six French provinces. The Constitutions were
reformed, and approved by Pope Pius VI with the Brief Iniunctae nobis
of 15 March 1776, but to no avail, for the French Revolution became
increasingly anti-clerical and, in 1793, suppressed all 79 monasteries.
The religious were dispersed and subjected to evil laws; those who
refused to comform were either guillotined, shot or deported(4).

Things were not much better in the Hapsburg dominions; Josph II
suppressed most of the houses in Austria in 1782-83, and those in Poland
and Lithuania in 1783-84. From 1797 suppressions spread to Italian
territories: Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, Venice, and, eventually,
Tuscany and Naples.

In 1802 many houses were lost in Germany. In 1810 a general law
suppressed all the houses in Italy and Belgium, though some of these
were afterwards recovered. In 1864, the Polish province practically
disappeared; some of its members were even deported to Siberia. A new
general decree of suppression was issued in Italy in 1866; this took
effect in and around Rome in 1873-74.

The acts of the general chapters of the Congregation reflect this
disturbed state of affairs: in 1785 only 16 out of 23 provincials
attended; in 1789, 19 failed to attend; in 1791 only six turned up, and
no general chapter was held from then until 1823. Even the definitory
general ceased to meet in the period May 1797-November 1801.

In 1823, when the Congregation had been reduced to 278 members and it
seemed in imminent danger of extinction, the provincials of the five
Italian provinces began to meet in Florence. They, or their
representatives, met every six years after that, though it was illegal
to do so, and sought to reorganise the Order and enable it to survive
the calamities of the times.

In 1859, the membership had risen to 970, but slipped back again over
the next ten years or so to 728. That they survived at all in the face
of wholesale suppression was due chiefly to the fact that many took
refuge on Mount Carmel or went out to swell the ranks of the
missionaries in the East(5).

________

1. On the Irish province cf. S.C.O'Mahony, The
Irish Dicalced Carmelites, 1625-1653, Ph.D. thesis at the University
of Dublin, 1976 (unpublished).2. For a history of the English Mission, see
B.Zimmerman, Carmel in England, 1615-1849, London, 1899.3. The banishment of all clergy from Ireland in 1653
led to this province being suppressed by the general chapter of that
year.4. For the history of the Teresian Carmel in France,
see the excellent synthesis: E.Alford, Annales breves des Carmes
Déchaux de France, 1600-1973, 4 vols., Avon 1972-73.5. For further details see V.Macca, Carmelitani
Scalzi, col.533-536. Here too one can read something of the
Portuguese Congregation (1773-1824) "of Our Lady of Mount Carmel".
The birth of this third Carmelite Congregation was due to external
political factors which necessitated the separation of the houses in
Portugal and Brazil from those of the Spanish Congregation. For this
reason it did not have an "origin and development" period like
the other two. Cf.David do C.J., A Reforma Teresiana em Portugal,
Lisbon 1962.